Where to start with R. F. Kuang

American novelist, born 1996. Won the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year in 2023 and 2024.

Best R. F. Kuang book to start with: Yellowface (2023), on 3 of the 12 lists it could have made.

Yellowface, Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2024, is the place to start. It is a quick, sharp satire of the publishing world, told by a young writer who takes a dead friend’s manuscript and passes it off as her own. You can read it in a couple of sittings, and it is the easiest way into Kuang’s writing.

Babel won the same British Book Awards prize the year before, in 2023. It is a much longer fantasy set at Oxford in the 1830s, in which translation works as a kind of magic, and it comes with footnotes, so give yourself time. Read it second, once you have a taste for her.

Katabasis, from 2025, is her newest. It is fantasy again and makes most sense as a third.